Simi says the little phrase again. Nobody steals your sun. Her battle cry. She ponders the words, turning them around in her head, then she places them up against the devastated school, a school she cannot even imagine because she never saw it, nor one like it, and now it is buried. Their sun was stolen she thinks, her mood sinking, dropping like a bag of wet flour, down into the depths. Down. Down. Until another thought wedges its way underneath her gloom, stopping the fall. She sits straighter.

Hold on. Their sun is stolen. Mine is not. I can do something. I could build a school? A school? Could I build a school?

She considers the plan, all sections of her business brain reviewing it from every angle. It does not take long for her to decide that there is no way she could build a school.

Not over there. Not with just Marybelle to help. So what then?

She looks around the shop, at the kaftans, and the rolls of fabric, and her eyes pause, pause on the fabric. And suddenly she knows. I can design a special kaftan. Dedicate the profits to the children. Then use those profits for books. Lots of books. Maybe a library? Then … maybe … a school? Stop Simidele. Stop. Stop. Stop. Slow down. One kaftan design. Make it special. Then see how it goes. That’s it. Slowly. Slowly. A proper plan. One that we just might be able to do.

She picks up the email again, and re-reads the last paragraph.

“How’s your hand? Hope it’s better. Would love to hear your news. Must go. Father Norman wants his computer back …”

Simi feels energised now. She has a vision, and she has Marybelle’s voice skipping around in her head.

“I’ll email again if the internet’s working, AND if there’s any electricity. Hope you’re warm and dry. Stay safe there Simi. Mind the rain. School due to start again in a week. Have to go …”

Covered in kisses, Simi refolds the piece of paper and puts it back into her pocket, her head already sketching designs for the new kaftan. She feels confident, sure that Marybelle will like the plan. That working on it little by little will be perfect for both of them.

Across the street she sees Joe’s dog stand up and stretch out his back. She watches as he shakes himself, turns a few small circles with his nose to the ground, and then lies down again, close to Old Joe. At least he has someone to share his life with she thinks, her eyes travelling to the elderly cactus on the corner of her desk. Small and spiky it sometimes surprises her with a pink flower, but not today. She leans across and digs her fingertips into the soil around the base of the plant. It feels dry, but not too dry.

“I’m going to build those kids a library,” she whispers to the plant. Then she leans back in her chair, swivelling it to either side, and makes the announcement again, a little more loudly. “Put this in your vape SJ. Your Mama Africa is going to build a library in Zimbabwe.”

Copyright Georgie Knaggs & The Phraser 2023

Simi adjusts her chair a little, and rereads Marybelle’s email. This time, with concentration fixed, she is jolted back instantly to the lodge, and to the battered land that lay beneath her as she was flown out of the Eastern Highlands. The words on the page cluster in her brain – ‘whole village flooded’, ‘swept away roads’. It is as though she is in the helicopter again, swooping low then up, with the pilot’s dry, staccato voice detailing the damage in her ear, logging the broken homes and bridges, the small businesses lost, the dangerous surge of the rivers flooding free of their banks.

So much gone, and so quickly.

She shuts her eyes, and tries to slow her brain, to steady it for the news that she knows is coming next.

 “ …Tonderai’s brother and family are safe, but sad news about the school. Caught in a landslide. Terrible. Ten children and one teacher dead. Another teacher still missing.”

The words chisel into Simi’s guilt, carving out the question she asks herself again and again – whether she could have done more? Whether she really was too ill to stay? She re-reads the paragraph about the school.

“… school … landslide … Another teacher still missing …”

Again the horror of it shocks through her. She pauses, and looks up from the email, staring out on to the street, eyes stiff.

A school. Those ten and the teachers must have been sleeping at the school. Staying over night because of the weather. Staying to avoid the worst of the rain and storm.

She is sure the school is the one that Precious attends. The Precious she has never met. The Precious she feels she knows well. The child of Tonderai, sharer of the story. A police siren wails down the road outside, snapping Simi back to London, back to her reality.

What am I doing? Sitting here dreaming. Stuck in a nightmare. Like I’ve been sucked into some kind of never never land. Their problems are not my problem. Only thing is, I can’t get out. Can’t just walk away. It’s like there’s a part of me still there. A part that needs to know their lives are getting better. That the chaos is clearing. Healing. Like my hand.

She turns her palm over and runs a finger along the scar. It is no longer sore to touch. All infection is gone.

They fixed me well out there. I have to give them that.

Then she thinks of Marybelle, hungry as the homeless, and of Tonderai and Rudd, their homes broken. Fixing themselves.

She shakes her head, and forces her senses back to the world on her own street. She holds herself there, soaking up the smells of the curry takeaways being prepared down the road – letting the noise of the traffic fill her head, like an orchestra that keeps interrupting itself. As she listens, her ear is caught by the bright singing of a bird from the tree behind her shop. Its voice is clear and pure. It lowers her sense of dread.

Nobody steals your sun.

Copyright Georgie Knaggs & The Phraser 2023

It’s Simi’s first day back at work. She sits down at the small, slightly wobbly table she calls her desk. It stands in the middle of her shop, and gives her a clear view of the street beyond the entrance. To either side of her hang rails of kaftans, vibrant as the tropics, with rolls of fabric stacked behind her, each flaring colour or bright with geometric repetition. This is her cocoon. Her Africa. And she is its queen.

She swivels the chair to take a look at herself in the floor length mirror behind her desk. Blazing in red and gold, she knows she looks magnificent. Big earrings. Big hair. And lipstick of the darkest red she could find. She feels deeply content, back in the pattern of life she loves, waiting for Lola to return with the coffees.

Home Simidele. This is home.

She turns her chair round to face the door again and lets her gaze wander out to the grey shades of comings and goings on the early morning street. Outside the newsagents sits Old Joe, just as he always does.

Him and that dog. Like bollards. Nobody notices them. Well some do, I suppose. I do most days. Try to put something in that hat of theirs.

She wants to wave, but he’s not looking.

I’ll go across later. At least it’s getting warmer for them now. But all that traffic. Those fumes. Bad enough sitting here.

As she watches a delivery van parks up in front of the pair, blocking her view. A car hoots, then hoots again. She sees it is not irritated with the van but with the scooter zigzagging fast through the traffic, boxy back defiant.

Hello London, she thinks, smiling to herself.

She closes her eyes, and remembers the pleasure of turning the key in her front door, of seeing the mail on the doormat, and the plants still alive. The hot water. The lights. The ready meal in the fridge. The vase of tulips from Lola, with that envelope propped up next to them.

That envelope. Where is that envelope?

She puts her hand into her pocket and feels its sharp edges.

I did remember it. That is one big relief. No way I want to lose Marybelle’s contact details.

She takes it out, its cream cool against the brilliance of her kaftan, and removes the carefully folded email inside, smoothing it out on the table as she begins to read. Tonderai’s name is the first to jump out at her. Marybelle’s note, written from Harare, and dotted with exclamation marks, tells Simi that Tonderai, his family and his village are safe. More good news!!! Jacobus and Tim, are well. Everyone says they’ve done INCREDIBLE work helping the doctors and the locals, and that now they are with Rudd, organising repairs to the lodge. Looks like they will be there for another week at least.

Simi counts the days on her fingers, starting with the date the email was sent.

They should be home tomorrow.

She skims on to the end, reaches the final row of kisses, and then goes back to the beginning, to read again, more slowly this time.

Copyright Georgie Knaggs & The Phraser 2023